As master of novices for ten years (1955-1965) at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Thomas Merton was responsible for the spiritual formation of young men preparing for monastic profession. In this volume, three related sets of Merton's conferences on ancient and contemporary documents governing the lives of the monks are published for the first time: - on the Carta Caritatis, or Charter of Charity, the foundational document of the Order of Citeaux - on the Consuetudines, the twelfth-century collection of customs and regulations of the Order - on the...

The diverse contributors to this issue of Plough Quarterly focus on what it means to be a peacemaker. Peacemaking, they show, is a riskier and more ambitious undertaking than we may have imagined. Today we must wage peace where thousands of children are being murdered by militias or forced to fight as soldiers. We need peacemakers in divided cities from Paris to Baltimore, peacemakers in a culture with little tolerance for Christian witness, and peacemakers in churches riven by ideological fights and petty grudges, not to mention making peace with our spouses, and with...

These conferences, presented by Thomas Merton to the novices at the Abbey of Gethsemani in 1963 1964, focus mainly on the life and writings of his great Cistercian predecessor, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 1153). Guiding his students through Bernard s Marian sermons, his treatise "On the Love of God," his controversy with Peter Abelard, and above all his great series of sermons on the Song of Songs, Merton reveals why Bernard was the major religious and cultural figure in Europe during the first half of the twelfth century and why he has remained one of the most influential spiritual...

A treasury of wisdom from the influential Christian contemplative, political activist, social visionary, and literary figure.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was spiritual parent to a generation--and his influence, through his many books, has only increased in the half-century since his death. He was a hermit who maintained a compelling correspondence with some of the most influential thinkers of his age; he was a social and political activist whose ideas had a seminal influence in the world beyond his monastic cloister; and he was a Christian who saw through the boundaries of religious...